Ancient Marabou Stork - Nearly 2M Tall - Roamed Island Of Flores 20-50,000 Years Ago - BBC

[hatrack]

A giant marabou stork has been discovered on an island once home to human-like 'hobbits'. Fossils of the bird were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores, a place previously famed for the discovery of Homo floresiensis, a small hominin species closely related to modern humans.

The stork may have been capable of hunting and eating juvenile members of this hominin species, say researchers who made the discovery, though there is no direct evidence the birds did so.

The finding, reported in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, also helps explain how prehistoric wildlife adapted to living on islands.

The new species of giant stork, named Leptoptilos robustus, stood 1.8m tall and weighed up to 16kg researchers estimate, making it taller and much heavier than living stork species. Palaeontologist Hanneke Meijer of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, and affiliated to the National Museum of Natural History in Leiden, the Netherlands, made the discovery with colleague Dr Rokus Due of the National Center for Archaeology in Jakarta, Indonesia.

EDIT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9261000/9261713.stm

[hunter]

1. Well, there's a surprising twist on the ancient stork story...

wikipedia

[phantom power]

2. 6 feet tall and 35 pounds -- bean pole

[hatrack]

3. Sounds like me in high school . . . .

nt